The Story

The third volume of Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction begins to pry a little deeper into life in Tokyo with the invaders looming overhead. While the major arcing story continued at a slower pace, we did get some focus on the characters and some individual smaller stories throughout the volume.

The first small story focused on the criticism of the S.E.S. for their development of the green ray cannons that were meant to protect Japan. This criticism comes after the end of volume two where they shot down an invader craft, causing it to crash into the city and kill 35 (and counting), people. Rather than answer the criticism of their actions, the company focused on saying they want to rebuild the trust of the people and talked about several other projects to eradicate the invaders. The second part of this story is told later in the volume where ground forces are fighting around the crash site, killing invaders as they come across them. We see this story again at the end of the volume where one of the agents, who seemed to be against fighting, freaks out after coming across two small invaders and kills one of them; however, he appears to be swayed when they surviving invader begins grieving for their dead friend.

Even though this was broken up into bits, it makes you wonder if this is some sort of foreshadowing which will cause some people of humanity to sympathize with the invaders. Given the fact that this volume also focused on invader protestors, I could see a civil clash happening in the future. Plus, this is Inio Asano we’re talking about here. Something that dark is right up his alley and it’ll be interesting to see if I’m right in guessing this!

The other part of the story focuses on Kadode and Ouran’s graduation from school. Right before graduation; however, they received the grim news that their friend and classmate Kiho Kurihara died in the crash that occurred at the end of volume two. Despite hearing the news, they carry on with life as best as they could, grieving only for a short while. Ouran and Kadode end up failing their entrance exams leaving them to figure out what to do in the future.

Overall, this was a pretty relaxed edition of Dead Dead Demon’s… and that’s not saying much since the volume has Inio Asano’s dark touch of grittiness written all over it. The volume used the story to set up a lot of foreshadowing into future events but we also did get some character development along the way.

Characters

Ai ended up getting some development when Mojiya confessed to her, saying that he liked her since the first grade. Ai ended turning Mojiya down and explained how due to circumstances she’s not ready for dating. She seems to be very content with living at home with all of her brothers. She also has a bit of a moment with her older brother, dubbed The Black Knight, when she discovers just how good of a gamer he is. It was almost if that she understood him a little bit for the first time. Nice to see a supporting character get a bit of attention even though it wasn’t super deep.

We had a very brief sighting of Keito as he paid a visit to Ouran on the school roof. As soon as Ouran came to the conclusion that he was an invader, he disappeared from sight. Just one or two pages and it really makes you wonder why he came to Ouran of all people. Then again, with Ouran’s unique personality, he could have been drawn to her. So many questions out of a very brief encounter that makes you wonder if they’re setting something up in the future between the two of them.

Speaking of brief encounters, we saw the return of Kohiruimaki who said he would go on a journey in order to become a man worthy of Kiho’s love. With Kiho dead, he’s sporting a new look where he looks completely emo now. Obviously, the news reached him and affecting him in a negative way. He seems very anti-invader or possibly anti-government now. I guess radicalized is the proper term to use here. It’ll be interesting to see where he goes but he is now a completely different person! I think he received the biggest development here for having such a short amount of “screen time”. Despite that, it’s the most interesting development because the door is now wide open to explore him as a character!

Final Thoughts

Volume three of Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction was a bit calmer but the individual stories and events all carried with them their own unique gravity. Some of the supporting characters got their time to shine and some even set up some interesting future plot points. Inio Asano continues to produced multi-layered stories within a single volume and whether he focuses on a particular story for an entire volume or just a few short pages, you always get a sense that things are moving forward and that everything has multiple layers to it.

One of the best things Asano does is make you think about what he means in his storytelling. Whether it’s making you guess at what comes next or what the context of his words are trying to convey, Asano always manages to put together a compelling story that makes you want to take in more than the art and words on the page.

About The Author

Josh (or J.J. as some have come to call him), is a long-time geek culture enthusiast with a deep passion for anime, manga and Japanese culture.
Josh also has a Bachelor of Arts in Game Design and is a creative writer who has created original content for over 20 years! He is also the author of the original English light novel Final Hope.

2 Responses

I need to start reading this series soon. I’ve never seen another series centering around an alien invasion that chooses to present the invasion in such a calm manner, and stray away from action or fighting scenes. I love series about invasions, so I’m definitely interested to see if I would like this spin on the genre. I’ve heard a lot of really great things about it though, so I’m pretty sure I’ll enjoy it! If you’re ever up for trying a more typical alien invasion based series, Unknown Code has a really interesting plot. Instead of the aliens invading the human population directly, they send a ‘code’ through commonly used electronics (like mp3 players and phones) to infect human listeners and turn them into zombie like creatures that attack other humans. The main character of the series is one of the few people who have survived being attacked by these ‘zombies’, and he’s now being tasked with helping to fight back against the code, and the alien invaders.

You might be in for a surprise if you go into this series thinking it’s about alien invasions. The invasion serves as a background for the story as it’s more or less about life in general, told through a gritty perspective. Inio Asano is more of a philosophical mangaka than anything. He takes the dark, gritty side of life, tosses out any shame, and molds it into his characters and story. Most of his series are metaphoric that require some layered thinking to fully grasp. Check out Goodnight Punpun (Oyasumi Punpun). It’s another one of his series that’s in the same style as Dead Dead Demon’s but it has a bigger emphasis on the life of Punpun and how he copes with life growing up.

Thank you for all of the continued feedback and suggestions! I appreciate them. I try to get to them but I’m always playing catch-up mode. Between my regular 8-5 job, The Outerhaven, and writing my light novel series, I’m constantly swamped with projects. In fact, as of this post, I still have 5 volumes of manga to review with another 6 on the way. It never ends!!! I’d by lying if I said it wasn’t fun, though!